Gravenhurst - The Western Lands

Nick Talbot's crew again craft a record in which the tracks blend together in a silky odyssey of gentle, dreamlike melodies. A delicate range of guitar styles are meticulously arranged over the stripped back acoustics as Talbot's poignant lyrical hum glides across the album surface with an abashed yet clinical romanticism. Song Among the Pine and Grand Union Canal are successfully ambient sonic realisations of their inferred locale while stand-out opening track, Saints, with a hint of Radiohead-like spontaneous discordance, uses clever harmonising and shifts in tempo to reflect the subject matter of rock star 'martyrdom'. File The Western Lands somewhere between Gravenhurst's touring partners Explosions in the Sky and Belle and Sebastian, but be mindful that they lack the former's epic edge and the latter's ear for a killer hook. [Jamie Borthwick]